Music is math. Music is business. Music is art. Few can leverage more than one side with any level of proficiency. Bow Valley musician Amelie Patterson is the kind of songwriter who knows her strengths and bridges the gaps of her own knowledge and skill to transform her own confident Alt-Folk songwriting into transfixing musical mechanica, with a little help from her friends. Upon completing a biology degree at the University of Victoria, Patterson slipped out of the merge lane and ended up diverting away from the scientific impulses and a family history of going into medicine. Turning her attention to music and songwriting, she pushed herself to a music residency at the Banff Centre where she met Will MacLellan (Raleigh) and the two decided to build a studio and record a record together. That project became 'Roll Honey Roll', Patterson’s debut, co-produced by MacLellan and Brock Geiger (Raleigh, The Dudes). Roll Honey Roll has gone on to win the YYC Music Awards Alternative Recording of The Year 2017. Though tempted by the prospect of a bigger musical market, Patterson doubled down on her community-oriented skillset and began recruiting other talented folks to her cause including Prophets of Music alum Kyle Tenove, Barry Mason as well as Carson Gant into her live ensemble. This community mindset garnered Patterson the inaugural poet-laureateship of Banff, AB. Completing the Coaltion Music Artist Entrepreneurship Program further cemented Patterson’s interest in assembling a team around her songs, directing her collaborators instead of dictating or arranging, and letting them play to their strengths around her articulate musical aspirations. The result is 'The Playlist', a series of diverse rolling singles, coherently organized into volumes, each centred on a thematic through-line. Patterson plays with genre and mood throughout, experimenting in writing and pushing herself and her collaborators to darken the corners of her moody soundscape. 'The Playlist' will be collapsible into 3 volumes, released song-by-song over a period of a few years, defined by, and reacting to, the social and musical moments to which each single breathes. Every bold and inward-facing musical singularity is readable in the lyrical and cultural moment it appears. Volume 1 will be released over the course of a year in concert with playful and unique merch items from independent Albertan artisans. The Playlist is at once present and omnipresent, a reactive and reflexive musical index of the development of an artist, her techniques, but most of all, her leadership.

Highlights

Art type: Live Music

Music type: Original Music

What this Artist plays most of the time

Genre: FolkAlternative

Home base: Banff

Appeals most (but not limited) to: university students and young adults ages 21-27, slight majority (53%) female

Top Stages Played *

Calgary Stampede Coke Stage

2018/07

Eric Harvey Theatre at the Banff Centre for Creative Arts (2017 and 2018)